“Which of the missing girls is Iris?” Raoul already knew the answer. Long before Dr. Whitney had experimented on the adult men, he had acquired girls from foreign orphanages and experimented on them, psychically enhancing them. When things had begun to go wrong, he had abandoned all of them except Lily, whom he’d kept and raised as his own daughter. Iris had been a small redhead with defiant eyes and an attitude the size of Texas. The nurses had nicknamed her “Flame,” and from the moment she learned Whitney forbade the name, Iris used it to make him angry. She’d been four years old.
Raoul had studied the tapes of the little girl far more than any of the others. She had a few abilities the others knew nothing about-but he did-he shared those same abilities. Even as a child she’d been smart enough-or angry enough-to hide her talents from Whitney. Her nickname was appropriate: Flame, a little matchstick that could flare up and be as destructive as hell under the right circumstances. Whitney didn’t know how very lucky he was.
“Iris had deep red hair, almost the color of wine, and she has acute hearing. She’s able to manipulate sound in extraordinary ways.”
“And she’s an anchor.” That would mean she wasn’t as vulnerable as some of the other girls. She could exist in the world without a shield.
Lily nodded. “I believe she is. I know it would be like looking for a needle in a haystack trying to find her, but you never know. She’d be somewhere between twenty- two and twenty-five now. My father kept meticulous records, yet he didn’t bother to record our birth dates, which makes no sense to me. I did an age simulation on the computer. Here’s what she’d look like now.” She handed him the photograph.
His heart nearly stopped beating, then accelerated wildly. Flame was beautiful. Not just striking, but truly exquisitely beautiful, unlike any woman he’d ever seen. Even in the photograph her skin looked so soft he found himself running the pad of his thumb over her face. He kept his expression relaxed, charming, unworried-the usual mask he wore. “You know, Lily, the chances of finding her are almost nil.”
She nodded her head and her gaze skittered away from his. It wasn’t the real reason she’d come. Gator waited. She shuffled her feet but didn’t speak.
“Spit it out, Lily. I’ve never been much for games. Say what you came to say.”
She slid past him to catch the edge of the door, peering out into the hallway before shutting it carefully. “This is confidential.”
“You know we’re a unit. I don’t keep things from Kyland or my men, not if it impacts them and what we do.”
“That’s just it, Gator, I don’t know if it does. I’ve discovered a couple of things, and I’m checking them out. You have to understand these experiments have spanned more than twenty years. There are dozens of computers and hard drives, storage disks and zip drives I haven’t even gotten to yet, and that doesn’t include handwritten notes. I started with the girls because we wanted to find them, but my father’s observations are mostly on paper and old archived disks. He references nearly everything with numbers. I have to figure out what the number refers to before I can keep going in my research to see what he did. It’s very time-consuming work, and it isn’t easy.”
Lily didn’t make excuses. This was so far out of character for her. Had she discovered the truth about him? He had watched the video of Iris “Flame” Johnson so many times maybe she’d become curious. Maybe she’d seen him stop the tape and study the picture-the one that showed the walls expand and contract slightly. The one where the floor shifted minutely when Flame’s little gaze had narrowed on the doctor. She’d detested Dr. Whitney and her temper had barely been controlled.
“What have you discovered, Lily?”
“I think my father also did gene enhancing on the girls-as well as on some of you men.” The words left her in a little rush. This time her gaze met his squarely as if trying to read his reaction.
He counted to ten in silence before he spoke. “Why would you think that?”
“The referencing numbers have two letters beside them, and I couldn’t figure it out.
“The girls. You used the phrase
Lily shook her head. “There are no
“Why do you think that would be, Lily?” He kept his voice fiat, even, ultra-calm.
“He used viruses to introduce the therapy to the cells.” Her voice faltered for the briefest of moments, but she carried on, her chin up. “I don’t think he wanted to take any chances with me, and he could use me as the control subject.”
“What was in the file that I should know about?”
“Flame had cancer. The symptoms presented nearly the same as leukemia. Bruising, fatigue, abnormal bleeding, bone and joint pain. All of it. He put it into remission, but…” She trailed off.
“But he didn’t stop. He continued to enhance her cells.”
Lily looked miserable as she nodded. “Yes. He continued to experiment on her. One of the problems when using a virus to infect the cells is the body produces antibodies to fight it off. By the second or third round, it does no good to use that virus.”
“So he made up another one.”
“Several of them. He obviously wanted to perfect his technique for later use. I think all of us girls were his first tries-”
“You mean his expendable rats,” Gator interrupted harshly. He curled his fingers into tight fists. “You were all expendable. No one wanted you. And he didn’t like her, did he? She was a lot of trouble because she was so strong-willed, just as Dahlia was- Dahlia, who was raised in a sanitarium, not a home.”
“That’s true, Gator, but thankfully, although Dahlia is enhanced, she has never had cancer. Nor could I find references to cancer in the files of any of the other girls he experimented on.”
Lily pressed her fingertips just above her eyes. “I haven’t gone through everything in Flame’s file but the cancer returned several times and each time he adjusted the virus and continued doping her after he put the cancer in remission. She’s very enhanced.”
“And you suspect I am as well.”
She bit her lip, but nodded again. “Are you, Gator? Can you run faster, jump higher? None of you have ever mentioned it to me-not even Ryland.”
He avoided the question. “Are you warning us that anyone who might be enhanced is susceptible to cancer?”
“I have no idea,” she said truthfully. “I believe he was working on a way to prevent the doping from stimulating the wrong cells. I think he used Flame to perfect his technique so he could make certain you and the others had fewer problems.”
“Charmin’ son of bitch, wasn’t he?” Gator stuffed the jeans into the duffel bag with a short violent stabbing motion. “He used her like a damn lab rat.”
“It’s worse than that, Gator. I hope to God I’m wrong. I can barely conceive of the idea that the man I knew as my father could have been such a monster, but I don’t think he wanted to cure Flame. I think he knew she’d get sick, and he figured her adopted parents would bring her back to him.”
“But they didn’t.”
“Not that I can see. But the chances of the cancer recurring seem likely. Regular treatment for leukemia would help, but it wouldn’t cure her. The cancer is caused by one particular wild cell.”
“And he knew that.”
Lily nodded reluctantly. “Without a doubt he knew it. The first time he experimented with putting the cancer into remission, he used a virus to insert DNA that caused the cancer cells to self-destruct by producing a protein that was deadly to itself. The second time he used a method of actually forcing the cancer cells to produce a protein that identified itself to her immune system, thereby causing her immune system to attack in a concentrated force, successfully destroying the cancer. It was brilliant really, far ahead of his time.” There was a trace of admiration in Lily’s voice she couldn’t hide from him.
Fury swept through him. Ugly. Dangerous. A snarling demon triggering an aggressive response. Gator turned
